Florida high court backs lesbian in visitation fight for adopted son

The Florida Supreme Court has cleared the way for a Seminole County lesbian to get visitation rights with her 6 1/2-year-old son, a boy she legally adopted after he was born to her female partner.

The couple broke up, and the birth mother moved her child to an undisclosed location and cut off all contact, according to court pleadings.

On Monday, the Florida Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling that upheld the parenting rights of the adoptive mother. The court issued no written opinion, just a one-page order, saying it had reviewed the case and would not accept jurisdiction.

The justices on the five-member panel that made that decision: Chief Justice Jorge Labarga, Barbara Pariente, Charles Canady, Ricky Polston and James Perry.

The names of the two mothers are secret. They are identified in court paperwork only by initials: C.P., the birth mother, and G.P., the adoptive mother.

In May, the Fifth District Court of Appeal in Daytona Beach reversed a lower court ruling, giving the adoptive mother full parental rights, something she'd been stripped of, and ordering a Sanford trial judge, Circuit Judge Linda Schoonover, to treat the case like any other custody dispute.

The case has since been assigned to a new Sanford judge, Circuit Judge John Galluzzo, who last week appointed a therapist for both mothers and the child to help reunify the boy with the adoptive mother after an absence of a year and a half.

In 2012, when the women were still a couple, a different Sanford judge, Marlene Alva, granted their request for an adoption. But their relationship unraveled and in 2012, the birth mother asked to nullify the adoption, and Schoonover did.

Fifth District Court of Appeal said that it would be "unconscionable" for the birth mother to destroy the child's relationship with his second mother after she had earlier gone to court to secure it.